– following increased electricity tariffs
CONSERVATION is one of the expected responses from the people of Linden, Region Ten (Upper Demerara/Berbice) following government’s recent proposal that they pay an increase in their electricity bills. Cabinet Secretary, and Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon pointed this out yesterday at his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown.
The government plans to integrate Linden with the national electricity grid for supply to residents in the mining town and has announced that, from July 1, the tariffs that Linden consumers now pay, by way of subsidy, will no longer be enjoyed.
It is proposed that the charges would be increased until they are aligned to what is paid by consumers countrywide.
According to Luncheon, there are records to show that cheap power has led to a pattern of use of power in Linden that essentially represents waste and an abnormal comparison with the rest of the grid.
The people of Linden consume in the residential at least two times as much power as residential grid customers in the rest of Guyana, and the business consumers in Linden consume one and a half as much as the comparative class under the business tariff rates in the rest of the grid.
Luncheon recalled that Cabinet outlined in its submission of the estimates its commitment to have the subsidy retained but at a lesser value, from practically $3B to $2B. That means that the tariffs would go up, but not to eliminate the subsidy.
“In essence, had the subsidy been reduced to zero, the Lindeners would have been paying the identical tariffs that the rest of the grid currently pays,” Luncheon said.
“The subsidy in Region Ten has seen two tariff rates only, that is, for the residential customers and for business. This of course is quite different from the rest of us on the grid where residential have been broken down into two groups and there is a differentiation in the rest of the grid between business, commercial, industrial. Those grid tariffs are present everywhere else other than in Region 10,” he explained.
According to him, what Cabinet has also decided is that fixed charges would not be imposed or would continue not to be imposed in Linden. “And those fixed charges include about $200 to $300 monthly on residential and it can go up to as much as $128,000 for the big industrial firms. That is what they pay in addition to their consumption.
“So the $48 to $53 per kilowatt hour that the rest of the grid, the residential consumers pay, that is not what is being imposed in linden. The proposal that would see the $1B reduction in subsidy would see the rates in Linden going up to minimally about 50 percent of the rate in the rest of the grid, so $24 to $26 per kilowatt hour.
For the commercial and the business, they currently pay $12 to $15; the rest of the grid at the lowest level of the commercial pay $63 and so the intention again with an increase to offset the $1B reduction in the subsidy would see the move to about $30 a kilowatt hour in Linden,” the Cabinet Secretary further explained.
It is proposed that the reform in the supply and pricing of electricity in Linden, effective from July 1, 2012 – that is, for the second half of this year – will be implemented as follows:-
(i) Merging the supply area of Linden Utility Services Co-op Society Ltd. (LUSCL) into Linden Electricity Company Inc. (LECI);
(ii) Aligning the classification of customers in Linden with that of GPL, and adopting the tariff schedule of GPL;
(iii) Calculating the monthly electricity bill of each customer in accordance with the GPL tariff; but,
(iv)Each customer will pay only half of the bill, as calculated for the remainder of 2012; and,
(v) Bauxite pensioners will receive the first 100 kWh each month at no charge, and will pay according to (iv) above for consumption beyond 100 kWh/month.

Even with the reform outlined above being implemented, $1,865,844,000 is provided for in the budget of 2012, as subsidy to consumers of electricity in Linden.